


Purpose Without Destination

by iwill_rocc_you



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: F/M, Freeform mostly, Vampire Hunters Kate and Seth, co-dependent Seth, one-sided Geckocest, post-season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1733720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwill_rocc_you/pseuds/iwill_rocc_you
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After that night Kate Fuller and Seth Gecko weren't the same. It only took them five months to find out what they wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purpose Without Destination

Convenience store on the 4th street corner. Three clerks that work in shifts of two days, simple and predictable regulations; safe tucked under the cash register, panic button underneath the surface of the counter, an average response time of seven minutes, twenty-five seconds, the button hiding underneath the small lighter kiosk.

  
Richie was seventeen. Tall for his age, lanky, but his wide jaw suggested that one day he’d fill in. Seth was eighteen, already adopting the swagger that he perfected in later years- together they were the brains and the smooth-talker, half the time Seth thought he was the brains, but it was always Richie who found all the places, knew the layout of the places like the back of his hand, the schedules, the tactics.

  
“Let’s do what dad did.” The younger Gecko said around the bite of a pretzel Seth was able to buy him from the little money he got from doing yard work for the neighbors of their foster parents. Though they didn’t really think of them as their parents- temporary rule enforcers.

They had three months to move out, Seth being eighteen and now of legal age could take Richie under his wing- only if Seth had the money to get an apartment and a steady job. And fuck if luck was on the other team, ‘cause it seemed like no place needed a smart-mouthed eighteen year old to work for them.

“What do you mean?” Seth took a sip of their shared cheap soda, something fruity that Richie liked. Seth didn’t mind.

Richie pushed up his heavy glasses, blue eyes determined, the look on his face something Seth recognized from their childhood. It was the look Richie got when he was figuring something out, jaw tight, blue eyes slightly narrowed and the corner of his lips turned down into a little frown.

“Steal things, Seth. Rob places. You know he did that stuff, you remember.”

Seth picked up thick pieces of salt off of the picnic table with his fingertip, rubbing the salt between his thumb and forefinger until he got tired of the feeling and let the salt fall back onto the table.

Richie put his half-eaten pretzel down. “We have to get that money, or we’ll just be shipped off to another piece of shit couple. Or kicked out into the streets.”

“Margaret and Steven aren’t that bad, Richie. You remember Ms. Trish? That old lady that had us for like six months, two years ago? That was a piece of shit. Margaret and Steven aren’t that bad.”

“They’re temporary. You’re old enough to get sent away. You heard what Steven said. Three months, and then he’d kick us out.”

“Kick me out, you get to stay with them.”

Richie let out a little laugh, “You’re crazy if you think I’m letting you walk away from me.”

Seth smirked, “You’re crazy to think I’d ever walk away from you. Who else am I going to buy stale street pretzels for?”

Richie didn’t comment, only smiled in that big way Seth only saw rarely; a genuine smile that showed all of his teeth and made him look like that boy Seth grew up with, the boy that protected him from his father, and snuck him into the living room to watch cartoons. Seth smiled back.

“Finish your food, we’ll talk about this later.”

Richie listened to him, taking those final bites of his pretzel before they headed back home. Seth put his arm over Richie’s shoulders as they walked, Richie laughing quietly about something Seth said to only him, the straw of the drink poised between his lips as they walked down the street, to a place that was only a place to sleep, no ties.

Maybe that was why Seth liked motels so much. No ties, no commitment. A temporary home just like all the homes that jumped in between as kids. It tethered Seth to place they came from, reminded him that everything was temporary, except for Richie.  
The gun was cold, impersonal. It had been five years since he even looked at a gun, but it was slowly coming back to him as he pointed it at the dumb-founded clerk behind the counter.

“Money in the bag, asshole.” Keep it cool, keep it cool. The clerk swallowed, wiping some sweat off of his forehead as Seth placed the blue duffel bag onto the counter.

“Cameras are taken care of,” Richie said, coming up behind him, eyes hard and voice all business.

Seth smirked, his eyes had shifted to Richie over his shoulder, and then back at the clerk that was moving like molasses to get the bills in the bag. “You move like you’re eighty, you got arthritis? Or maybe you’re just blind, see this?” He wiggled the metal in his hand, the dark silver glistening in the overhead lights like it was laughing, the clerk nodded vigorously, “Well, keep moving like this and you won’t be seeing anything, you understand?” The clerk swallowed again and nodded, moving his shaking hands quicker to get all the money in the bag.

Seth watched all the money from the cash register, calculating in his head all the money that was being placed in the bag. Twenties, a handful of tens, a couple of fives, a shitton of ones- he was half-tempted to tell the clerk to empty the safe too, but his hands were beginning to get shaky, his heart pounding, a cold sweat forming down his back.

Seth could feel Richie still behind him, a warm shadow that was watching the clerk like a hawk. Seth was glad for that, because Seth had his eyes trained on the bills when the dumb clerk went to press the panic button, a red, ugly thing that would surely have Seth behind bars, Richie taken away from him.

Richie snatched the gun from Seth’s sweating hand and quick like a snake slammed the butt of the gun against the clerk’s head, sending him sprawling to the floor, instantly unconscious.

Without hesitating Seth snatched the bag, half empty but still more money than Seth had even seen in his life, grabbed Richie by the front of his shirt, and ran from the convenience store.

That night they packed what very little they owned into the same duffel bag that held all the money and left without leaving a note. Maybe Seth might have felt guilty about that, since Margaret and Steven had always been good to them, but Richie was the only person he ever truly cared for, and he still had him.

After that, the rest is history, from that one afternoon where Seth made the decision to choose his brother over everything, as he would have done anyway. The Gecko brothers were brains and brawn, the straight-man and the joker, good cop bad cop, anything they had to be to stay together, to get through the world together. And that was all that ever mattered to Seth.

___

The car felt empty without Richie next to him. Sometimes he’d turn his head and expect to see him, turn to say something to him, only to see Kate instead. Every time it was a cold realization, a bucket of ice water that washed away any thoughts that would make him pretend that everything was okay.

If it had been Richie they would already be laughing about it. Together. They’d just be glad to be together, to have survived a nest of vampires, a chapter in their complicated, criminal novel that they never expected. Seth would still have Richie, be able to reach out and touch him, a tangible thing that would instantly calm Seth… but he wasn’t there, and Seth was not calm.

Kate was handling herself well. It was only twice that he looked over expecting to see Richie, to see Kate crying quietly, stoically, and almost heroically. Seth didn’t know if he should admire or envy her.

He followed the winding dirt road, going deeper into Mexico without a destination, because he was still under heat in the states, and Kate didn’t comment. He found himself missing American soil as they went past endless desert, red dirt, and a never ending maze of twisting green cactuses with pink, blooming flowers. In every dark corner he could see the greenish-yellow, glowing eyes of the culebras, curved snake fangs every time he blinked, and the face of his brother, smeared with blood and smirking at him.

Halfway through the trip Kate grabbed his hand. He didn’t pull away. He hadn’t realized he had been crying too.

They passed four motels before Seth couldn’t stand being behind the wheel of a car anymore. They pulled over and didn’t speak, and Seth got the room, and craved the bitter burn of whiskey. Though when he saw Kate sitting still on the edge of the motel bed (because the piece of shit motel didn’t have double beds, and Seth didn’t give a fuck anymore), hands folded in her lap, staring at the floor, Seth knew that being a numb, drunken mess wouldn’t help anyone.

He took off his suit jacket, let it hang over the edge of a wooden chair, and turned on the TV because he didn’t want to think anymore, and the silence would kill him.  
Kate joined him after some time, sitting next to him on the loveseat couch, bringing her knees up to her chest and staring at the TV with her eyes tired and red-rimmed, dark circles under her eyes, and Seth wondered how long they had been driving, and realized he hadn’t been keeping track of the time.

Seth didn’t know what they were watching, he didn’t really care what it was, because it was noise, and familiar, and something that he could focus on without having to remember that Richie liked to watch cartoons, and always liked the old ones best, the ones where the animals didn’t talk and set up ingenious contraptions to catch each other. Richie could watch those for hours, and Seth always settled with whatever Richie wanted to watch.

Those cartoons weren’t on the TV as Seth stared at it with a dead look on his face, it was some infomercial about a lawnmower Seth wasn’t ever going to buy or need, at a ridiculous price he wouldn’t waste on a lawnmower anyway.

Kate had moved closer to Seth, resting her head on his shoulder, and Seth felt like the biggest asshole on the entire planet. It wasn’t a thing he meant to feel, but Seth was a decent person. Richie had always been the one inclined to violence, while Seth was a man that would rather talk his way out than fight his way out.

Seth was the reason Kate's family was dead, the two people she had left, her father and her brother, both dead because Seth snatched an opportunity.

“You should want to kill me right now, not cuddle.” Seth said, eyes still trained on the TV, and trying to ignore the urge to wrap an arm around the girl that was pressed against him.

“I should,” Kate agreed with him, her voice small and without emotion, “But I don’t.”

That was all the answer Seth needed, though he still didn’t put an arm around her like he wanted to.

___

Sometimes in the middle of the night Kate screams out in her sleep, and there’s nothing Seth can do about it. He can wake her up, wipe away her tears, and watch her until she falls back asleep. Seth couldn’t remember when it had happened the first time, but it started out being a once a week thing to nightly, and Seth doesn’t mind because he couldn’t sleep anyway.

When Seth went to sleep he could hear Richie’s voice in his head, see his smiling face around the straw of a soda, or his blue eyes sparkling through his glasses- and he always wakes up with a cold sweat, and a heavy heart. Sometimes he relives their time at the temple, and sometimes there’s dreams where Richie makes it, and Seth doesn’t have to be alone anymore. Where they kill the queen bitch together and escape, and everything goes back to normal. He dreams that his brother would choose him over her, just like Seth would choose Richie over anyone that stood between them. Though those happy dreams happen very rarely and Seth would rather have the nightmares.

They keep traveling, always moving. Seth knows a guy who knows a guy, and they cash a little bit of the bonds one at a time as they need it, and Seth thinks about stopping for once. He thinks about settling down, cashing all the bonds and buying a boat or a house, learn how to become a homeowner or a sailor- forgetting his past, his father and his brother, all the jobs he’s pulled in his lifetime, and get a new name, a new life. It was what he dreamed of with Vanessa. Though she had a point, and it was always going to be about him and Richie, because whatever Seth did, it was because of Richie.

Well, Richie wasn’t with him anymore and he had cash to burn.

“What do you want to do?” Seth asked Kate over breakfast one morning, an old burger for him and a cheap fruit bowl from a gas station down the road for her.

“What do you mean?” She asked around a piece of strawberry, and Seth was having Déjà vu. He put down his burger and ran a hand down his face, trying to rub away the exhaustion of not sleeping very well weighing down on him.

“These past few months we’ve been driving around, nonstop. I swear my ass is pressed flat from sitting in that fucking car for so long-” Kate laughed softly at that, eyes cast downwards at her fruit and Seth let himself smirk, “But we haven’t been doing anything but… just, going. Aren’t you tired of that?” Kate didn’t answer immediately, but pushed around a piece of grapefruit in her bowl back and forth with her gas station spork. “Don’t you want to stop?”

Kate sighed softly, “And do what, Seth?” She looked up, expression looking so much like Richie’s Seth felt his heart stutter for a moment, and he looked away quickly.

“I don’t know. But we can stop moving. When you want to.”

“I like moving.” Kate confessed softly, her eyes were back down and Seth felt safe to look at her again. “When we stop for too long… I feel antsy. I feel… I feel like I’m in danger again. When we’re moving there’s a purpose, there’s no destination, but it’s farther away from that damn bar.” Kate didn’t cuss as much as Seth, but that only meant that when she did cuss, it was well-placed and meant a hell of a lot more than when Seth did it.

“Then we’ll keep moving.”

Kate didn’t respond to his statement, but she had looked up at him again, and there was a small smile on her lips that Seth didn’t see, but could feel.

___

It happened on accident.

It had been a long time since Seth was covered in blood, but since he was happening again, he decided to enjoy it. And this time they weren’t caught with their pants down because they knew exactly what they were doing. Seth almost didn’t want Kate to go into the bar with him (recognizing the symbol of the eye on one of the biker jackets that entered the bar), but he knew he couldn’t stop her. It was her fight just as much as it was his, maybe even twice-fold since she lost one more family member than he did that night.

“Hey, ese, you’re not welcome here.”

Seth grinned, because he’s heard it all before. “It’s my girl’s birthday,” he lied, putting an arm over Kate’s shoulders, allowing the pig to let his eyes slide over to her, take her all in like the predator he was. “She just turned 21, can’t we get some tequila to celebrate?”

And just like that they were welcomed at the bar, and Seth was both grateful and oddly possessive of the pretty girl that broke down the bartender.

They sat at a table in the back, without drinking the bottle of tequila that Seth purchased. Without speaking they knew what to do, and it was no surprise to them when the culebras came out, and it was no surprise that killing them came as easily to them as breathing, and was more gratifying than anything they had ever experienced.  
What was even better was the six people they managed to save, looking as scared and confused as they did in the beginning, only Kate and Seth knew that they would turn out better than they did.

That night, once all of the blood had been washed off of them and they sat in their motel room, limbs heavy and sore from stabbing and slashing, ducking and bathing in the blood of the assholes that took everything away from them, Seth looked over at Kate and knew exactly what he wanted. He didn’t want to settle down in one place with a house or a boat- he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life running from his past anymore, and what he couldn’t have.

Kate looked right back at him and Seth didn’t want to shy away from her big green eyes, like he had done so many times before- and Kate had the exactly same look in her eyes that Seth did.

Seth reached out to her, the first time he had ever really reached out to her in the five months they had been traveling together, put a warm hand on the back of her neck, and dragged her to him. He kissed her hard, pouring into her all of the emotions he didn’t let take hold of him since he lost his brother. She kissed him right back, with the urgency to forget everything but what was happening in the moment they were pressed together.

They made love on the motel bed and knew that their world had shifted, that they weren’t the same people anymore, and that they had purpose, and that they just had to find a destination.


End file.
